John Van Dyk talks about his experiences since superstorm Sandy while outside the shelter at Monmouth Park. / PHOTO: STEPHEN EDELSON

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OCEANPORT — It was midday two Sundays ago when John Van Dyk threw some belongings into his Ford Econoline van and pulled away from the apartment he shared with his brother in Sea Bright.

Connect the dots since then, and a portrait emerges of how displaced residents with little margin for error have been tossed around like a tissue in hurricane-force winds, from riding out superstorm Sandy in a Kmart parking lot, through shelters at Croydon Hall in Middletown and Monmouth University in West Long Branch, and onto the tent city and Monmouth Park in Oceanport.

“After a night at Croydon Hall, I was like, ‘Let’s just jump on the bus to Monmouth University, go on this adventure and see what happens,’ ” said the 52-year-old as he soaked in the morning sun outside Monmouth Park.

“No one knew it was going to be like this, and here I am, still here. … Nobody ever said, ‘What if?’ Everyone, including myself, thought it would be a few days’ thing. But here we are two weeks later, and my life is in limbo.”

First he was an evacuee, then a refugee and a shelteree, as he moved through the system.

Now, living on the second floor of the grandstand, he’s referred to as a client, which he figures means someone’s making money off of him.

But he’s not complaining about the accommodations, which are like a five-star hotel compared with the three nights he spent in the tent that alternated between freezing and boiling in the parking lot across Oceanport Avenue.

“This is 100 percent better,” he said. “You’re still living in a hallway, but there’s hot food, you have showers, they’ve got laundry. They brought in a barber (Sunday), there’s medical set up. It took a while, but they got their acts together.”

Van Dyk has seen some of the beauty that can emerge in the aftermath of the catastrophic event, as people band together for a common cause.

He has fond memories of the children at Monmouth University and the resilience they showed, playing together and chasing one another around the Multipurpose Activities Center while their parents pondered the next move.

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He was struck by the impressive work done by AmeriCorps volunteers who gathered at the center.

“They’re college graduates who sign up for a year of humanitarian work,” he said. “They were working feverishly 12 hours a day.”

He’s also witnessed bureaucracy in action, with all its foibles and red tape. He needs assistance to find a new place to live and get his life in the radio communications industry back on track, having lost his income.

With nowhere else to go, he’s hunkered down for however long it takes, having to remain at the shelter to stay in the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s system.

“The plan for me is I’m just riding the storm out,” he said. “As long as I’m here, FEMA has to do something with me. Dealing with the government, it grinds slowly. It will get done, but it grinds slowly. I’m in the grinder.”

Van Dyk indicates he’s one of the lucky ones because he actually has a vehicle to come and go if he wants. But that’s probably overstating things. It’s hard to think of anyone in this situation as being particularly lucky.

“I went out late last week for the first time and did laundry, went to McDonald’s and got a Big Mac, and went to the library to use the computer,” he said. “But when I got out there, I saw everyone’s life just going on, and that was the first time I really felt a little down. I was like, ‘Look at all these people having fun.’ ”

So on he goes, eating the eggs, fried chicken and Salisbury steak, sleeping in a dormitory setting where the snoring around you is hard to ignore, and trying to spark a chain of events that advances his situation.

“Who would have ever thought?” he wondered aloud.

And when the government is your last chance, you hold on and hope for the best.